


Cullen Drabbles

by thesecondseal



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Lyrium Addiction, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-18
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-03-18 12:00:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3568835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesecondseal/pseuds/thesecondseal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen-centric pov (mostly). Snippets of character development. Getting into the commander's head. Third person.</p><p>Lots of warnings. It can get rough in here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Consequence of Nightmare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cullen and Essa struggle with their demons.

"Do you truly think that I came to you clean and fine?" she asked, arms wrapped around her body as if through strength of will she could hold herself together.  Spare them both the wound of her reaching for him.

"Do you think that I don’t have my own terrible demons?"

He flinched, though whether from the deliberate awfulness of her chosen words or the tears in her eyes, Essa didn’t know. She watched as his retreat across the bed placed ever-increasing shadows between them.

"You don’t understand," he said quietly, without accusation.

It wasn’t her fault that she couldn’t understand. It wasn’t about dirty or clean, though there were days when he thought the taint would never leave his skin, never stop raggedly tearing at every nerve in his body until he shook with it.

And raged.

It wasn’t just the physical pain. Though the gnawing want of it made every poetic waxing of passion and desire seem a mockery of vicious cravings. There were nights when he woke, a snarling, snapping thing, chased from fever dreams by the monster he feared he would be forever fleeing. The monster he shackled every morning with his devotions, and kept caged behind the blessed burdens of his command.

She couldn’t know how the Inquisition had saved him. That the world tearing apart around him had placed solid earth beneath his feet. How guilty he felt for finding salvation in the midst of so much loss and destruction.

“I know that you’re trying,” he offered helplessly, wanting to comfort even as part of him insisted he drive her away for both their sakes.

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? The loss of trust in himself. Knowing that his mind whispered weakness and falsehoods. He knew that the same voice that said he should send her away— _no, keep her! she could save you_ — _no! you’ll kill her too you know. One night she won’t be able to pry your nightmare from her throat—_

His hands shook as he wrapped them around his head, pushing back against his thoughts. Breathe. One long inhale. He dropped his hands on the release, thanked the Maker they were steadier. The problem with the voice in his head was that it was the same one that earnestly whispered promises of relief if he would just reach for the box in his desk…

And that the voice was his own.

She hadn’t spoken again.  She didn’t know to, and he couldn’t tell her. Not yet. He needed Cassandra.  It would never matter how loud his voice was. How bitter or angry or exhausted he was from shouting in his head against the interminable ache. Her voice was always louder. But not Essa. No, Essa held her words tight in her jaw, as if her secrets were bile. She wasn’t ready for the purging of them, and he knew that he was in no condition to hold her through it, even if she was.

Cullen reached for his clothes. He dressed with calm, controlled motions meant to reassure them both that the violence was gone. He still had to get past her to the ladder, and he didn’t know which would be worse, if she recoiled from his nearness

Or if she didn’t.

Essa watched his emotions chase each other across his face. He still wouldn’t look at her properly. Was too afraid to watch the bruises blossoming on her face. The warm sherry of his eyes had gone hard and brittle like amber; when he glanced her way he stared at a point over her left shoulder, a soldier’s stalwart attention.

"Go," she said, so softly she barely heard herself.  “Find Cassandra.”

She stepped aside, gave him a clear path to his descent. There would be time to splinter the fragile stillness between them, but she wouldn’t be the pressure that broke him. She had watched herself shatter once, years ago. Fine porcelain dreams gone to dust amid the ashes of her marriage bed.

“I’m—“

She cut him off.

“Don’t you  _dare_  say you’re sorry,” she said, eyes flashing dark and bottomless.

She gave no threats, no promises of retaliation, but he knew an order when he heard one.

Essa watched him climb down into the darkness below. Waited as his quiet, measured steps took him across the office. Waited as the door closed quietly behind him. She counted to ten. Slow, deep breaths that pushed against her arms. She was trembling as she unwound them, spreading her hands into the velvet of the fading night. She stared down at her shaking hands, watched the lights war, blue and green.

“’Woe to you mage,’” she quoted with quiet condemnation. “”Woe to you bringer of ash, destroyer of dreams.’”


	2. His People

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angst. Cullen's headspace on a bad day. Too many hauntings.

Cullen didn’t recognize the man he had been.  Sometimes this helped him reconcile who he had been with the man he wanted to be, but sometimes the disconnect just made him feel trapped in the life he had left behind.  He struggled against his past. Wanted to lash out at even the most benign reminders. Burn it all to ash so that nothing remained to haunt him. He never knew how to feel about Mia’s letters. She lectured a man she loved but was angry with. A man he couldn’t imagine being worthy of that love. Because that man was the same one he hated.  A shadow from whom Cullen carried bitter memories and guilt. The ghost of a monster.

He still saw their faces in his dreams. He wondered how many haunted him from the Fade and how many were just his own conscience tormenting him with the lives he had helped destroy. Trying to judge his reality against the weight of what he deserved drove him mad some nights. Cullen wished he could name them all with the same solemn resolution that Essa spoke of her list of sins. She carried their names—their lives—with a cold, stalwart grace that spoke of an acceptance he wasn’t certain he wanted. But, they were different, he and Essa. The number of lives he had changed, harmed, or end in the names of Andraste and the Maker could not be confined to a single square of folded parchment. He could not count the infractions. The injustices.

Because he could never really know.

When he looked back on his time in Kirkwall, there was only a haze of righteousness and fear. He might not recognize the man he had been, but he could still taste his terror, feel his fury running like poison in his veins. Every choice Cullen had made had been so that he could at least hope to sleep at night. So that no one had to suffer as he had suffered at Kinloch Hold. He still had dreams, Fade-trapped memories that clutched at his mind and skin with the same lurid tenacity of Desire demons. For a time, believing that he was doing the Maker’s work had helped beat those nightmares back.

It was the duty of the righteous to punish the wicked.  Cullen didn’t know when he had started believing that, but the not so subtle perversion was dark and troublesome. When he left his childhood home, he had believed with all of his heart that it was his honor to protect the righteous from the wicked.

And those two things were not the same.

For too long he had believed that they were. He looked back on the path his life had taken and tried to find the point at which such darkness overtook him. There should have been a harsh line, a jagged cut between the youth he had been and the man he called monster in an attempt to distance himself from the years of fear and rage and self-importance.

He believed he was doing the Maker’s work. Believed that cruelty could be justified. Essa said that sometimes people needed killing. She was unshakeable in her resolve, just as he had been.

But he had been wrong. Who was to say that years from now she wouldn’t find herself a stranger as she looked back on her past? That she wouldn’t brand herself a monster?

Meredith’s madness had broken him. He knew that his name was merely added to a long list of victims, and that in many ways his claims were nothing compared to those whose murders, rapes, and torture she had either participated in or allowed to happen. Tranquility had wielded like a too casual sword and with equal horror. He should have seen her for what she was, but he had needed her authority. Needed a firm voice, a constant support against the abominations of his past.

Cassandra tried to tell him that he was victim. That Meredith used her charisma and authority against his fears and needs to manipulate him. He rejected the idea as ludicrous. Cullen Rutherford had only been a victim once in his life and those events had nearly destroyed him and his faith. No, he carried the blame of Kirkwall. He was a strategist, for Andraste’s sake. Being able to accurately read people was imperative. If he could so easily be fooled by a senior officer, then what madness had induced Cassandra to recruit him for the Inquisition?

Or did she just want a gullible lackey willing to bloody his hands and soul for her cause?

He knew the thought was uncharitable, and most days he knew it for passing paranoia, but that didn’t stop the whispers of doubt. Didn’t keep them from taking a startling hold on his reality in the worst of moments.

Today was one of the bad days.

“You’re too isolated,” Essa told that him in her clear, practical voice.

He had found her in the stable playing with a litter of kittens and chatting with the horses as if they were old friends gathered around a fire.

Today was one of the days that he hated himself for loving her.

“And you’re not?” he asked, stung by the hypocrisy. “By the Maker, Essa, you’re the Inquisitor, and you’re hiding in the stable like vermin.”

She didn’t rise to the bait. Blackwall grunted, looked up from his work table. He was one of Essa’s darlings. They could, she said often enough, be alone while together. And she had the gall to lecture him about solitude. She who prized it to excess.

“Who are your people, Cullen?”

Her head was tipped to the side with her query. It was a mabari-like affectation that reminded him she had been largely raised by one. His people were not her “people.” They never would be.

He started to name his family. His sisters’ names sounded false on his tongue and when Essa stopped him with a slow shake of her head, he wanted to shout at her. His people were ghosts and regrets.

“No,” she said, and he wondered if she could read his thoughts. She possessed a calm that he had begun to fantasize about breaking.  “Those _were_ your people. They may even be again. But who are your people now?”

“You are.” He hurled the words at her like a spear, but she only smiled and deflected the intended blow.

“Not today,” she replied as if it were of no consequence.

One of the kittens attacked her bare foot and Essa giggled. She grabbed the orange tabby around the middle, swooped it toward her face and blew a loud sound against its wriggling belly. The kitten yowled with feigned outraged and batted her gently on the nose. Cullen turned on his heel and strode angrily toward the practice yard.

 


	3. Skyhold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I threatened tears that I couldn't deliver. ;)  
> From tumblr: [No tears. I know! I’m sorry. I didn’t deliver. Today got all over the place though.Here, have some pretty angst instead. 407 words]

The fortress was cold and empty. The portcullis was frozen at its midpoint, rusted  half-closed in unspoken farewell. The yards had long been abandoned. Doors hung open on broken hinges, once stalwart oak cracked and cold, soaked heavy with the sky’s tears. The halls no longer echoed with footsteps or voices. The stone stood aching and mute, its song left to languish like hearth ash. There had been laughter here once and purpose. They had grown with the same profusion as roses and herbs in the green, green garden. Crocuses to herald the first hint of spring, rosemary and mint growing in summer riots.  Hope and healing, bright notes amid the Frostback Mountains.

He planted embrium near there, just outside the chapel, in a forgotten corner behind a barrel of blood lotus. Embrium for remembrance. Burying seeds in the softly turned earth, one for every nightmare that fell away to her persistence. He wasn’t sure how many had grown and bloomed and withered to drop seeds that grew and bloomed again before she realized what that tangled bed meant to them.

The night that he proposed, she wore a wreath of embrium blossoms and bee balm in her hair—as if they too went together naturally—and  that pale linen gown that she would never admit to Josie she loved. A necklace of tumbled glass.  Cobalt shards gathered from his office floor the morning after the first night they made love.  He had flushed with realization the first time he saw the carefully edged glass scattered through links of silver so fine it looked as if the glass had shattered across her sun-dark skin.

And she had grinned, brazen and true, fully aware of how the unabashed sentimentality threatened to steal his reserve.

She should be here, he thought, angry and listless as he wandered through the fallow garden. Dry leaves rustled in the wind, brown against perpetual grey. He could almost hear laughter in the threat of winter, claimed it hers to comfort his grief.

_It’s just a body, Cullen._

She had repeated the words so often he had determined to make her a liar. Grounding her in that form even as he worshipped the divine trapped within her flesh. He realized too late that his love had made her mortal, tarnished what grace she had been given.

_I am not telling you goodbye._

But that became another lie.


	4. Essa's Boots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bit of weekend fluff. 880 words. Cullen x Essa. Departure from canon wardrobe. :D

There were sixteen pairs of eyes on each of Essa’s knee boots. A total of sixty-four through which laces had to be dragged before she could get her feet out of the blighted things. Two stiff buckles and a pair of rather obstinate cuffs. The leather was too thin, too pale, and too soft to be of much use beyond running around Skyhold. 

Josie insisted it was the finest Antivan leather and they all believed her, but Essa would have rather had a coat made from the stuff. The boots were too supple. They had to be cinched too tightly around her calves just to stay in place. There was no getting out of them swiftly, and they took a full five minutes to put on each morning. They required a shoe horn, for Andraste’s sake!

Essa Trevelyan was quite possibly the last person in all of Thedas who should have such complicated gear.

“You are certain,” Leliana asked, her soft accent carefully devoid of inflection. “That these are what you want?”

Cullen stared down into the box, a smile brightening the tawny shadows of his gaze.

“You disapprove?” he asked her.

“They are,” Leliana’s nose wrinkled delicately. “very practical.”

His smile spread, tugging and brightening the scar on his upper lip.

“You checked the fit?”

“You do realize that I am not the Inquisition’s cobbler.”

There was barely checked laughter in the not quite question. Cullen chuckled.

“I just—“

But Leliana waved one lissome hand to silence the explanation she didn’t need.

“They will fit perfectly,” she assured him. “They are a gift sweetly given, Cullen.”

She pressed a kiss to his cheek.

“Now hurry and take them to Essa before she dresses for the morning meeting. I cannot wait to see Josie’s face when our Inquisitor shows up wearing these hideous things.”

“Hideous?” Cullen demanded in feigned offense.

“Practical,” she amended with smothered giggle.

Cullen knew that for Leliana they meant the same thing.

Moments later Cullen knocked on the door to Essa’s quarters. She didn’t answer—she was probably out on the balcony—so he let himself in careful to stomp and clank all the way up the stairs. He called out as he neared the final steps, pausing just out of line of sight.

“Es?”

“Come on up!” she called, voice rough with frustration. “I’m almost ready, I’m just—“

Cullen gained the top step and spotted her across the expanse of her quarters.

“’Struggling with these blighted boots’,” he finished the familiar quote.

Essa dropped the boot in question with a laugh. It’s mate was still on the floor before her.

“I complain about them a lot, huh?” she asked with mild chagrin.

Cullen crossed the room to where she sat on the edge of her rarely used bed. He nudged the offending boots away from her feet. Essa glanced up at him curiously.

“With good reason,” he told. “Perhaps these will suit you better.”

He placed the box carefully on her knees. Essa stared down for a single confused heartbeat before surprise brightened her face, chasing the weight of too many worries from her eyes.

“You got me shoes?” she asked incredulously.

She lifted the boots from the box with infinite care, a look of reverence on her face. They were hopelessly plain. Good quality, dark brown, waxed leather, rounded toes, wide shafts unembellished shafts that would come half way up her calves.

“Oh!” Essa clasped the boots to her chest, buried her face against the leather. “Cullen, they’re perfect.”

He took the box from her knees and set it aside.

“They will need to be re-waxed every so often,” he said glancing away so that she wouldn’t see that he was blushing. “But they should be water resistant for a while.”

She held them away from her in order to study them. “They just pull on?” she asked in disbelief.

Cullen nodded, not quite trusting his voice. He watched her shove one socked foot into a boot, hands gripping the tabs on either side of the top of the boot’s shaft. Her foot slid in perfectly and Essa laughed with glee. She tugged the other on in short order, leaping to her feet to spin around the room in delight.  Cullen smiled when she executed a quick box step.

“They fit like a dream.” She stared down at her feet in wonder. “Josie is going to kill you, you know.”

Cullen chuckled. “I enlisted Leliana,” he informed her. “Josie won’t take us both on.”

Essa laughed again, spun back to him.

“Thank you,” she said, her sincerity a heavy, beautiful burden.

She reached for him and Cullen stood, still and calm in the same manner he had watched her use so many times. Her arms came around his waist cautiously, the hug a tremulous, cautious askance. And still he waited. Waited for her to press her body against his. Waited for her to take a single shuddering breath, before he wrapped his arms around her.

“You’re welcome,”  he murmured, dropping a kiss amid the tousle of her brown hair. 

He nestled his chin against the top of her head and drew the scent of lemon balm, mint, horse, and Essa into his lungs. She was warm and solid in his arms. She felt like certainty for all that she claimed to lack it.

He felt her take another breath, wondered if she found the threat of contentment as dangerous as he did.

“Shall we go traumatize Ambassador Montilyet?” he asked.

Essa grinned. “Oh, let’s!”


	5. Prayers (pov shift)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was a pov shift prompt on tumblr. Cullen's point of view from Prayers, one of Essa's Drabbles.

[Prayers (the original)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3748258/chapters/8439082)

She was kneeling in the garden, head bowed over a bed of Andraste’s Grace. The petals of the flowers shown like dawn for all that the sky was dark and the sun was still an assurance beneath the jagged walls of the mountains. He had never seen her pray, and he was still shocked to find that disconcerted him. Essa spoke often and easily of the Maker, as if they were old comrades-in-arms rather than creator and worshipper. Most of the time he met the blasphemy with faint amusement, but there were days when her refusal to face the weight of her transgressions made his so much heavier.

“So you do kneel to pray.”

He did not keep the accusation from his words. The sight of her on her knees, softly turned earth staining the legs of yet another pair of breeches, made him furious.

“In the dirt,” he said, nostrils flaring slightly in derision.

He needed her fire, that special rage he knew she held for and against him.

“In the dirt,” she all but whispered in reply. “Amid the flowers. Beneath the trees. And before my love.”

Her hands were clasped gently in her lap. She gazed at them, refusing to meet the anger in his eyes. He wondered why she could not tell him the secret for not seeing them covered in blood and pain. There were nights that he woke still feeling the sticky warmth seeping between his fingers. He stared down at her, as if the weight of his regard could somehow cow such a spirit.

As if he wanted it to.

He wondered what could break her. He was afraid to touch her with such darkness in his heart. Her hair fell forward, brown locks shadowing her face. His fingertips brushed the crown of her head, and he offered a broken prayer that none of them ever found out. Surely the world could not bear such hate.

When she lifted her face, he nearly turned from her. He saw himself tangled in the love that stormed through her eyes and he feared he deserved neither the glory of it nor the punishment. To surrender to Essa would be to stand defenseless before the Maker.

Scour me clean, he wanted to beg. But she would only tell him that she couldn’t. That only he could lay down what he carried.

And Cullen did not think he was ready.


	6. Bathtime Follies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From tumblr: more-aoe sent me the Domesticity Challenge Masterlist with a pointed nudge toward number 18 (Wash the car/horse/vehicle). So um…yeah…here you go. :) 
> 
> [Cullen x Essa. Geri. Folly. ponies and fluff]
> 
> No, you will not make me apologize for that terrible pun of a title. ;)

The summer sun shone brightly on Smoke’s Valley. Only the highest peaks of the Frostbacks bore snow that would always linger. The sky was a clear blue, achingly empty of clouds, and the day yawned around them like eternity waiting to be filled with the best intentions.  But horses didn’t feel the tether of those far reaching expectations. They did not fight against potential futures; they merely carried their pasts with implacable dignity and living only for every present.

It still amazed Cullen that as Michel explained horses to him, he felt he was learning Essa.

Folly snorted softly, calling him back from his thoughts. A sound that he had once taken for ire, he had learned was more often a contented sigh. The difference could be as simple as a head tilt or the swish of a tail. Cullen rubbed the filly’s neck. He was still learning and today had been a good day.

“Take our lady down to the falls,” Michel said, tossing Cullen a soft rope halter. “She has worked very hard today.”

Cullen had to agree. That the training felt more like play in no way detracted from the amount of energy it took. He and Folly had both worked up a considerable sweat in the heat. Cullen all the more since they were getting her accustomed to his armor. He caught the halter, smiling with pride when Folly neither flinched nor reared as the tack sailed toward her. She had been a little head-shy when they first started, though not in the usual way. Where some horses startled away from sudden movements, especially near their heads, the filly had a tendency to meet them with aggressive defense. She was a little warrior, his Folly.

Cullen could only hope she would forgive him for being a hopeless infantryman.

He held the halter open for her, and she nuzzled his hands before slipping her nose down into the tightly knitted cotton. Michel had said nothing the day Cullen brought his first attempt to the stable, and for a moment he had thought the man was silently judging him a sentimental fool. Then he had shown Cullen the proper sliding knots to adjust the fit.

“You will want a bucket,” the chevalier called as Cullen led Folly out of the round pen. “And towels.”

Cullen paused. “She can’t just dry in the sun?”

Michel laughed. “Not for her, Commander. For you.”

Cullen thanked him for the morning’s lesson and headed to the stable. Folly pranced along beside him, hooves kicking up a fine dust as they entered. Cullen dropped a rope in his tack box just in case, and threw a towel over the top for good measure. The little horse waited attentively as he quickly removed his armor. When he caught himself stacking it neatly in front of her stall, Cullen laughed. He was getting as bad as Essa.

Folly received two treats for her patience and then they were off to the falls. He imagined they made quite the picture, the Inquisition’s general and the not yet a yearling who trotted beside him, leadless, coat gleaming like cloth of gold in the early afternoon light. She could have tried for a snack as they made their way through the fields. The corn was young and sweet, oats a temptation of rich green behind its fence, but Folly paused only once to sneak a cheek scratch from one of the young women working at the irrigation trench.

They followed the well-beaten dirt path past the grain silo that was still under construction. It would lay in the shadow of the mountain for most of the day. Just beyond, the stone rose in sharp grey vertical. From high above a clear fall of water pitched into the valley, filling a cold, deep tarn before flowing out into a wide, shallow stream.

“Well,” Cullen said softly as he and Folly drew to a halt a few dozen paces away. “Aren’t they something?”

Essa and Geri were standing knee-deep in the water, just beyond the stones that lined the pool edge, where the stream began, rippling out over pebbles and sand to warm beneath the sun. For the moment, the bay appeared to be standing quietly, but somehow Essa was soaked from head to toe. Her linen tunic clung, leaving not a single familiar curve to Cullen’s imagination. Her cotton trousers hung close against her legs, the cuffs rolled up to reveal hard muscle, tanned skin, and no few scars. Her feet were bare. A smirk curved her lips as she lifted one to kick water against Geri’s legs.

The horse looked so offended that Cullen couldn’t help laughing. Essa turned her grin from Geri and before she could call a greeting, the forder caught the back of her tunic in his teeth and lifted her off her feet.  Essa squealed with laughter, flailing back one foot an instant before the horse dropped her with a heavy splash into the water below. It wasn’t deep enough for her to submerge upon impact, but she landed in an indecorous sputtering tangle that seemed to please Geri immensely.

Cullen dropped his tack box carefully to the ground as he and Folly jogged forward. Even though Essa was chortling, he couldn’t quite dismiss his concern. He was still learning proper horse and rider behavior, and he was pretty sure that what he had just witness wasn’t normal.

“Are you alright?” he asked wading into the water to reach a hand down to her.

Geri stared down his long white blaze at the two of them. Essa was still laughing as she took Cullen’s hand and let him haul her to her feet.

“Were you ogling me again?” she asked plucking at her sodden tunic.

“I might have been.”

She held out her hand in teasing and Cullen grinned.

“I thought we worked that out in trade now.”

Essa’s smile threatened the sun with its broadening joy. “It is a nice arrangement,” she said, leaning up to brush a kiss across his lips.

Geri lashed out then, one front leg plunging into the water, sending up a plume that splashed both of them. Cullen’s quiet shout of indignation earned a fresh flood of giggles from Essa.

“Instant returns,” she mused, reaching one hand back to pat Geri’s wet neck in appreciation. “Have I told you that you’re my favorite?”

Cullen stared down into darkening grey eyes. 

“Are you talking to me or your horse?” he asked as her body heat pressed through their wet clothes to warm his skin.

“Both.”

She reached for him, hands tracing the muscles of his chest beneath damp cotton. Cullen lowered his lips to hers and kissed her properly, until Essa sighed praises into his mouth and melded against him.

“Ow!”

He felt her stiffen an instant before she pulled back. Cullen stared down at her for a brief moment of confusion before Folly shoved her nose between them, eyes narrowed and ears pinned flat to her head. Essa pushed the filly away with a laughing reprimand.

“Oh, no, my lady,” she said, walking forward a step so that Folly was forced to back up. “We do not bite.”

“Well, sometimes,” Cullen said, earning a glare from Essa.

“We do not joke about that with impressionable young ones,” she said, lifting her tunic to reveal a bright curve reddening one hip.

She never broke eye contact with Folly.

“Your lady is a jealous one,” she informed him.

Cullen sighed. “I suppose one of you had to be. Better her.”

Essa nodded, waited patiently for Folly to drop her head.

“Good girl,” she murmured, reaching up to scratch behind her ear. “Now how about a bath?”


	7. Apple Tarts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> oh, gods, so much fluff lately. I live a fluffy life. While I think it's important to write angst (especially when the character and character development require it) I just can't lately. so here. Have cute Cullen and Essa flirting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This piece inspired art by the lovely cobaltash over on tumblr! I've added it at the bottom. Image links to her blog!

“What are you doing?” Cullen asked, drawing up short upon entering the dimly lit kitchen. 

Essa’s head snapped toward him in surprise, guilt flushing her cheeks bright and rosy, even in the low light. She was wearing the sleeveless brown robe that Josephine hated. The skirt was tied up high in surprisingly artful swags to a worn leather belt. Her leggings were patched in too many places, myriad squares a mendicant’s riot. Her feet were bare, and almost clean.

He hadn’t seen her in weeks. Cullen thought she looked beautiful, even as she scowled at him.

“What are  _you_ doing?” she retorted, scrambling for an acceptable answer.

She turned toward him, hands and wooden counter concealed behind her back.

“Sneaking pastries,” he answered easily enough. “Ola spoils me. There’s always a treat hidden in here for me.”

Cullen walked over to a small stoneware crock tucked into the back corner of another prep counter.  “I was hoping for an apple tart.”

He frowned in disappointment to he find the crock empty. Denied his late night snack, Cullen’s attention returned immediately to Essa. She had gotten in late, and the note she sent had promised that she would meet him once she had bathed and been debriefed by Leliana. He’d had no reason to expect to find her in the kitchen. According to Essa, she had—after over a year in the field—managed only a fairly decent stew.

Cullen walked toward her, a smirk lifting one side of his mouth. Essa jerked her chin, sending an errant braid back behind her ear.  Her skin was darker; her face just a little sunburnt, caused a scattering of summer freckles to stand out on the crooked bridge of her nose.

“Are you going to tell me what you’re doing?” he asked, peering over her shoulder into the shadows at her back. “Or am I going to have to look for myself?”

Essa glared at him and almost pulled her hands forward to stop him from getting too close. He watched as she caught the impulse, holding her hands fast behind her, and puffing out her chest to take up more space.  Her breasts teased against the loose fall of his shirt and Cullen smiled.

“You already had my attention,” he murmured, knowing the effect a low confession always had upon her.

Essa glared at him, and Cullen ignored her, bending to place a soft kiss on her cheek. There was a smudge of flour following her jawline. He wiped it away, bare fingers lingering in whispers. Her pulse drummed behind her skin, earning a sweetly placed kiss as he tasted the frantic leap of her heart.

She reached for him, but Cullen caught her hands, kept them behind her back.

“Don’t you dare,” the admonishment was murmured against her neck. “You’ll have me covered in flour.”

Her felt her tense and for a moment Cullen had a very clear vision of Essa’s flour covered hands coming forward in attack. It would be glorious, he thought with a smile. Definitely worse than the time he and Mia had gotten into a kitchen fight, but Ola would not find their waste of food amusing, and neither would Essa in the aftermath of impulse. He held fast to her wrists, waited for her self-restraint to catch up before stroking his hands slowly up her arms. His thumbs swept into the valleys of her elbows, across the fainter echo of the pulse beneath his lips.

Essa sighed and arched more fully against him.

“It’s supposed to be a secret,” she mumbled, head tipping back to offer him better access to her throat.

His smile sharpened, nipped gently at taut skin.

“I thought we,” he emphasized the plural with a slightly harder bite. “Weren’t going to keep secrets.”

The sentence was punctuated with another nip and Essa’s knees began to tremble. She forced the bow of her body back against the table with a frown, but the heat he saw blooming in her eyes was not from ire. Cullen slipped his hands beneath the gathers of her skirt, repalms resting on her legging clad hips. The touch was all the more powerful for its easy familiarity.

“I asked Ola to teach me,” Essa said, looking away with uncommon shyness. “When I found out about your pastry crock. I don’t get to do it often, but when I’m home—“

She broke off, dipping one shoulder forward to push at him in discomfiture. “I brought apples from the Hinterlands. You would never have known if you had kept to your routine,” she griped. “You’re hours early.”

He stared down at her, speechless, which was just as well. He knew he would have to soften her up before he could tell her what the gesture meant to him.

“I wanted to get back to my office,” he explained instead, nuzzling back in toward her pout. “I was hoping you’d stop by after your meeting with Leliana.”

Her lips parted around his name just before he kissed her, a slow lingering to torture them both.

“I missed you,” she managed breathlessly, when he pulled away.

“I missed you,” he agreed. “So, why in Andraste’s name are you here making pastries when I cleared my desk for you an hour ago?”

Essa blushed. Not a gentle flush of a demur rose. No. Blood rushed into her face and neck. Scarlet splotched the freckles beneath her collarbones. The scar beneath her ear stood out bright and white in its slash down toward her pulse. It was the first time Cullen had ever gotten the better of her; he finally understood why she teased him so mercilessly.

“Maker’s breath!” he exclaimed, laughing as he pulled her into a hug. He gazed down at her fondly. “You should see your face!”

“Haha,” Essa grouched, bumping him away just enough to turn back to her work. “Very funny. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I didn’t miss you that much.”

Cullen placed a warm kiss on the back of her neck, hands coming again to rest higher and with a taunt of upon her hips. Essa groaned.

“This would go a lot faster, if you would behave,” she said, quickly transferring tarts to pan.

She was surly; he knew by now it was not with him, but her own impatience.

“Or,” he countered, teeth skimming the neckline of her dress as his fingertips brushed along the waistband of her leggings. “You could be very, very quiet.”

 

[ ](http://cobaltash.tumblr.com/)


	8. Laser Tag

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Saw this on tumblr and couldn't resist.
> 
> halleydoedog:  
> take me laser tagging and then push me into a corner and kiss me. then shoot me and walk away.  
> histrionicyang:  
> imagine ur otp

He kissed her until she was boneless and yielding, until every sigh was a broken attempt at his name. Cullen’s palms slid from her waist to her ass and she pulled herself up, knees sliding to either side of his hips until her thighs rest in the splay of his hands and her legs wrapped tightly around his waist. He groaned something that sounded almost like regret, but he had yet to stop kissing her. 

“We’re supposed to be enemies,” she reminded him when his lips left hers for precious air. 

“I remember.” 

Essa leaned back, dragging him with her weight deeper into the darkness of the corner. Her shoulders hit the wall hard, puffed a breath of laughter out of both of them. There was a certain festiveness to the recirculated air with the Chargers shouting in the near distance, battle cries and boisterous boasts raised above the not wholly inappropriate ten year old arena rock being pumped out over the sound system. The lights were black and neon, a riot against his tousled hair and the completely unnecessary face paint. Still if there anything better than Cullen in a plain white t-shirt she hadn’t yet experienced the pleasure.

Though, by the Mabari, she was willing.

“We should probably…” When had she gotten her hands beneath his shirt? Essa could only marvel at her own accidental genius. Maker’s breath! His skin felt like silk, the smooth pucker of scar begging for lips and tongue. 

“Yes,” Cullen agreed, teeth worrying lightly at her collarbone. “We should probably.”

He eased her legs to the ground, took a few moments to right her clothing and his before he stepped back.

“Presentable?” he asked.

“Nearly.” Essa’s giggle was as bright and damning as the gaze that slid toward his belt.

“Rude,” Cullen said flatly.

She was still crowing with laughter when he shot her in the chest and walked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am finally nearing the end of all the fanfiction. (hopefully by mid February!) I know that I'll need to organize these drabbles and such after that, but I have no real idea on the best way to do that yet, so I will take any suggestions you might have. :D


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